The example of the Sheffield players was not lost on their neighbours, and combination of some kind or other was cultivated in other of the northern districts. East Lancashire had meanwhile taken up the Association game with enthusiasm. Just about the time when passing began to be considered essential to the success of a team, Blackburn furnished two clubs, both of which played an important part in the competition for the Football Association Cup. As far as I can remember, the first English team to give any exhibition of a systematic passing game in London was the Blackburn Olympic, when they won the Cup in the spring of 1883 at the Oval. The tactics of the Olympic were altogether different to those which had found favour with the Scotchmen, and though they demonstrated a new possibility, it was not of a kind to secure the approval of southern players. Their game was an -alternation of long passing and vigorous rushes, which, effectual enough as it proved as a novelty, and under the favourable circumstances of that particular match, did not impress the majority of southern players as likely to be the best possible style of play under every conceivable condition of ground and weather.
I have been at some pains to show the chief incidents which marked the evolution of the Association game. The leaders in the movement which gave rise to the scientific game of to-day were, as I have already stated, Queen's Park in Scotland and the Sheffield players on this side of the Tweed. The next move—and the most important of the many changes which have taken place in the formation of a team—though, was essentially the work of English; rather than of Scotch footballers. For some time before its adoption the idea of a third half-back had been urged, and with pertinacity, by some of the best judges of the game. The northern clubs, who were the first to take kindly to
